Jihyo sighed as Seungcheol left the room, but she was glad for it nonetheless; even though the last time Seungcheol met up with her friends, it was a much lighter time and she enjoyed the way they grilled him, Jihyo obviously knew that this time was different. Jihyo loved her friends, but she knew that if they had any inclination that her and Seungcheol were anything more than friends, they wouldn’t hesitate to say something careless and make things awkward for the both of them. However, Jihyo also knew Seungcheol well enough to know that he would have taken on all of their questions and careless remarks without hesitation, which made Jihyo smile.

Unfortunately, Jihyo’s smile didn’t get to last long.

“She said he didn’t make her cry, but he made her last time, so I don’t doubt he’d do it again,” Jeongyeon remarked.

“He looks like the type of meathead to make women cry,” Nayeon rolled her eyes.

“Will you two stop it , Seungcheol isn’t a bad guy. And the last time he made me cry, it wasn’t even really his fault. I just had a lot of things built up and he happened to say something that made everything come out. Same goes for this time, too.” Jihyo shoved at her friends lightly with a playfully annoyed pout as she made her way to the sofa. She curled right up to Mina’s side, and Mina smiled and wrapped her arm around her friend. “I was just worried, that’s all. I’ve always felt somewhat like a burden to him, and then we started getting serious—”

“Wait,” Nayeon interjected with a scoff. “ what?”

“What do you mean getting serious?” Jeongyeon asked, voice low and laced with confusion.

“Ohhhh, Jihyo-yah,” Sana squealed while she made her way over to Jihyo’s other side. Mina gasped, and she didn’t say anything other than soft a “Eh?”

“You’re joking right?” Nayeon continued, her and Jeongyeon sparing a look at each other before turning back to Jihyo.

Jihyo raised a brow at the look before furrowing her brows. “No, I’m not joking. What was that look for?” Jihyo sat up, from her position curled up into Mina’s side. Nayeon and Jeongyeon moved to sit in front of the couch, on the floor, joining the other three.

“Listen, Jihyo, considering how your last relationship went, we’re just not convinced Seungcheol is all he’s cracked up to be,” Jeongyeon shrugged. Jihyo had fire at the tip of her tongue at that statement, but Nayeon was faster to follow up.

“There just has to be something wrong with him. He’s a good-looking, in decent shape, “nice guy” with a cute kid—he’s the type of person that gets eaten up quick . You know what? Maybe that’s the problem,” Nayeon chuckled and wagged a finger at Jihyo. “he’s bi right? There’s no way he’s not gonna cheat, then,” It was at this comment where Jihyo finally shot up from where he was sitting, absolutely furious.

“That is it! ” Jihyo seetheed, hands clenched at her sides. “I’m not even going to comment on what you said about my last relationship and what you so lovingly implied about me, Jeong, but Im Nayeon, how dare you even go there!” Jihyo’s voice was firm, and he tried her best to keep the volume down as to not startle the children or Seungcheol.

“Jihyo—” Jeongyeon and Nayeon started, but she cut them off.

“No, you guys talk all the time, and I force myself to listen. This time...this time you’re going to listen to me.” Jihyo held up a finger, stopping the other two from speaking up again. Jihyo took a deep breath to calm herself down before she finally let everything out. “First of all, Nayeon unnie, I really can’t believe you’d say something like that. Not just about Seungcheol, but about biual individuals in general. I thought you were better than that…” Jihyo’s stare on Nayeon was unmoving, and the older woman couldn’t do anything but hang her head low.

“And you know, ever since the Mark thing happened, I’ve been suffering, and I’ve done all of that suffering all on my own. You guys are my best friends, you’re supposed to let me know when I’ve made mistakes, that’s true, but you’re not supposed to make me feel like absolute because of them. You’re supposed to support me, to help me move on, but you guys never did any of that. You were so judgemental, that I decided to keep everything in and pretend like I wasn’t hurting, like I was above it all. And that killed me inside, but I couldn’t do anything about. I had to it all up and raise a child all by myself.” Jihyo realized a little bit too late that she had began crying again, and that her voice might have been getting a little loud, so he took another deep breath and wiped at her face.

“Even though I feel like a burden to him more often than not, I’m so damn grateful for Seungcheol in my life. I finally had someone I could connect with, someone I could finally break down to and they wouldn’t judge me for my past mistakes and continue to bring me down further than I bring myself down.” That comment made Nayeon and Jeongyeon wince, and Jihyo could see their own tears falling down their faces slowly. “If you guys, my best friends, won’t let go of the past so you can start helping me in the present then...then maybe I don’t need friends like you. And this isn’t me choosing a man over you, this is me choosing to finally stop letting myself feel burdened by things I’ve long since haven’t been able to change, and stop letting others making me feel burdened as well.” Jihyo’s chest ached at the sight of her friends looks of fear when we mentioned not being friends anymore, but she stood her ground; Jihyo stood straight, chin leveled, gaze unwavering—she was more serious about this than she had ever been about anything else in her life.

Jihyo had never felt more unsettled, yet so free .

Regardless of Jihyo’s feelings being directed more towards her long-time friends, Nayeon and Jeongyeon, Sana was the first to rush up to Jihyo to hug her. Sana hugged Jihyo’s side and apologized for everything despite never really being apart of the problem, and even Mina joined in with her own tears in her eyes, shining like diamonds. Nayeon and Jeongyeon didn’t move in until Sana and Mina got their fill of apologizing in and finally pulled away to rest back onto the couch.

Jeongyeon ran her hand through her hair several times, much like she always did whenever she was stressed, and she sniffled. “Jihyo, you mean the entire world to me, you know that, right? I’m so sorry, for everything,” Jeongyeon hugged Jihyo tenderly, wrapping Jihyo up in her arms completely. When she pulled away, Jeongyeon took Jihyo’s face into her hands and placed a chaste kiss on the top of Jihyo’s head as she always used to do when they were younger.

Next was Nayeon, who had steadily become a mess of tears. Nayeon practically fell into Jihyo and hugged her tightly, kissing her temples repeatedly. “Jihyo-yah, I’m sorry...I shouldn’t have let my overprotectiveness get to that point. I love you so much, and your happiness means the world to me, it truly does. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you,” Nayeon mumbled out through her sobs along with how they couldn’t stop being friends, the universe wouldn’t allow it.

(“And just who does the universe think it is?” Jihyo scoffed and rolled her eyes playfully, knowing exactly where this was going.

“Me, I’m the universe,” Nayeon cried out, hugging Jihyo tighter.)

Afterwards, all of the women sat together (Sana and Mina moved to the floor so Nayeon and Jeongyeon could sandwich Jihyo in between them) and continued to talk everything out; however, it was mostly Jihyo elaborating on her relationship with Seungcheol.

“Well, we happened to meet while picking up the kids one day; I was running late as usual, but he was there watching while Hansol and Tzuyu played. We ended up talking anyways because Hansol and and the girls had become friends recently. Cheol was really hesitant to talk about himself in the beginning, but his vague situation ended up sounding like my situation, so I became a bit interested,” Jihyo recalled their first meeting with a fond smile.

“Straight out of a romcom,” Nayeon commented softly with a sniffle.

“Oh, just you wait…” Jihyo snorted. “Anyways, he offered to give me a ride next time and we exchanged numbers so he could know when I got home safely before we parted ways that day. Next time I hit him up, he had a whole car seat for Tzuyu, had just bought it. He set up the whole thing in the rain, and oh my god,” Jihyo leaned back into the sofa and squealed quietly. Now that she was finally starting to move on to something more with Seungcheol, thinking about all of their past memories made her a lot more flustered than they did before.

“Are you thinking about how rocking abs?” Jeongyeon grinned lopsidedly and nudged at Jihyo.

“ert!” Mina quipped quietly with a teasing chuckle, tongue poked out between her teeth.

“No, shut up . He doesn’t even have abs...” Jihyo covered her face. “It’s just that, I remembered that he not only gave Tzuyu his cap, he also covered her with the towel I gave him to make sure she didn’t get wet. It was so cute and he looked like such a dad,”

“Are you swooning because he looked like he was Tzuyu’s dad?” Sana asked, head rested on Nayeon’s lap. She was smiling coyly as she watched Jihyo flush and cover her face once more.

“ Anyways , from there, he kept giving me rides and it was fun because we would hang out at my place often instead of just doing a drop off. The kids got to hangout a lot and we got to know each other more, hence why I was able to talk to him about Mark and whatnot. But the most fun I had was when he finally opened up about his past relationship,”

“Yeah, learning about other people’s past emotional trauma is fun,” Mina chimed in and the women simply looked at her.

Mina looked back at all of them with a pout. “...That was supposed to be a joke…” The group of women nodded slowly before turning back to Jihyo.

“It wasn’t his emotional breakdown that was fun, Mina ,” Jihyo gave Mina a pointed look. “but afterwards. I took him out in the rain and we just played. We weren’t single parents who had to carry the world on their shoulders, we were just two irresponsible young adults in that moment. It felt good. For the first time in a long time, I felt my actual age. Even better if when he kissed me goodnight and was so flustered about it while also being absolutely sure of what he did. He didn’t pretend to promise me forever, just something, which was honestly all we needed because we were both still healing. Then we promised each other someday the next morning, because Hansol asked about us getting married, and neither of us could say no—didn’t want to, actually.” At this, Nayeon and Sana squealed. Sana placing herself in Nayeon’s lap and the two of them hugged each other tight.

“I can’t believe I’m friends with a drama plotline,” Nayeon joked, burying her face into Sana’s chest.

“Midseason : he called me his girlfriend before we came back into the living room,” Jihyo squealed, and the rest of the group squealed once again. They haven’t done these kinds of things in a while, and Jihyo has never felt better than she did now. She felt like things were finally starting to go right in her life again: her relationship with her friends was back to where it used to be, she wasn’t burdened by her past anymore, and finally, she had someone who she could fearlessly promise forever with.

“He really takes care of you, huh?” Jeongyeon said, leaning her head on Jihyo’s shoulder as she clung to Mina who felt left out on the floor by herself.

The fond smile that Jihyo was sporting before was back. “Yeah…” The women looked on as Jihyo seemingly got into her thoughts again. Over the course of their talk, it had become clear to them that Seungcheol wasn’t another mark, not by a longshot—his promises of forever were quite different in the fact that Seungcheol was broken and unsure of himself, but when it came down to Jihyo, he was absolutely certain that she was who he wanted, and he made sure to take it slow with her to prove it, too. He took care of Jihyo when she needed someone the most—something that her friends will lament for quite a while—and to top it all off, Tzuyu seemed to really like him as well (Jihyo had explained that Tzuyu accidentally referred to him as “daddy” not too long ago). Seungcheol was the kind of guy that Mark made himself out to be, but this time, the women didn’t see Seungcheol changing any time soon—or ever, for that fact.

In the end, the women ended their talk with Jihyo demanding that they apologize to Seungcheol for being so callous to him. Jihyo went to bring him out, and when she did, he returned with his hair in all kinds of ponytails and various colors decorating his face was seemed to be an attempt at makeup. The mothers looked at him in half-horror, half-amusement, but he waved it off as he was the one who offered himself up to the School Meal Club’s makeup substitute of markers instead. With this, the women couldn’t hold in their laughter anymore, but Jihyo noticed that it wasn’t teasing as it used to be; her friends looked at Seungcheol warmly, and Jihyo felt even better as both of her worlds finally came together (in every sense of the phrase).

All of the women apologized for their behavior towards Seungcheol the times that they met him, specifically Nayeon. “It’s cool.” Seungcheol accepted their apology easily. “Jihyo is your friend, and she went through a tough time. You all just wanted to protect her. Though, you all might not have chosen the best method—in my humblest, outsider opinion—it was coming from a good place, at least.” Seungcheol smiled and Nayeon shoved at him for being too much of a good guy.

Nonetheless, they all offer to help Seungcheol clean up—Mina and Jeongyeon make quick work of cleaning up his face, being experts in the art of washing marker (amongst other art supplies) off of surfaces since Chaeyoung is their daughter, while Sana and Nayeon help with untangling his ponytails that were definitely the work of Dahyun.

“Thanks a lot for making me presentable again.” Seungcheol ran a hand through his hair, pleased to have the ponytails out since they ended up actually hurting a lot when Nayeon and Sana started taking them out. The women answer with varying responses of “No problem,” since their kids get up to those kinds of things on the daily. “It’s not too late, but if you all want, you can stay for dinner? I’ll have to go do some major grocery shopping though,”

“Sounds good!” Jeongyeon exclaimed excitedly, clasping her hands together.

“I guess we can finish moving Jihyo in in the meantime, there’s still a lot to get done,” Mina looked around at some of the boxes that littered just the living room of the apartment.

“Sounds like a plan, I guess?” Jihyo looked towards Seungcheol and he gave her a thumbs up. She smiled brightly at him and returned the gesture.

“If you need any extra room for anything, my room has all the space in the world,” Seungcheol said as he started getting ready to leave. Jihyo patted him on the back with a soft thank you before her and the rest headed back to what was now going to be her room with a few boxes in hand while Seungcheol left to go shopping.